


sounds in the dark

by neverlasting_legend (splitdevotion)



Series: the Pied Piper [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 04:25:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splitdevotion/pseuds/neverlasting_legend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She told him to be careful of the pipes but he's never even seen him play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sounds in the dark

Baelfire comes to the island and hears the cries of the Lost Boys and it’s disturbing but expected.  

Wendy had told him of Neverland – told tales of the Lost Boys and their leader with far-off eyes that were equal parts haunted and mournful.  

She whispered of the cries she heard when she first arrived – the savagery of the games they played and the cruelty that lurked underneath the facade of boyish innocence.

When he's given up and taken to Pan's camp, he's wary.  He eyes each boy as if they were vipers and he the prey.  It's not far from the truth.  They circle around him constantly.  Make him feel as if he's a bleeding hunk of meat surrounded by sharks.  

They jeer as they chase him through the jungle and laugh as they shoot arrows dangerously close to his body.  At the end of each day, they _herd_ him back to the camp.  They don't watch him – don't keep guard over him like the _prisoner_ he is but Baelfire stays.  

Don't get it wrong, he _wants_ to leave – desires it above anything to escape these boys he hates and their leader he _fears._ Neverland is a treacherous place though and he's just a boy so very far away from home and Baelfire has no delusions of surviving outside the camp alone.

At night, he makes sure to sleep as close to the fire as he can get while still being far, far away from Pan. 

Baelfire isn’t stupid.  He’s smart and better yet, he’s _street_ smart.  He has a way of reading people when he’s not actively interested in believing else wise of them and it’s saved him many, _many_ times in his time on the lower-side of London.

The Pan hates him.

He supposes that it’s not the most surprising or alarming thing anyone else on this God-forsaken island could infer but the intensity of his hatred takes Baelfire a little off-guard.  He acts as if he had purposely wronged him in some life before and just his presence sometimes is enough to want him _dead_.

He makes it no secret to the Lost Boys that Baelfire is a _prisoner_ and that he will never be one of them.

One night, Baelfire is feeling brave.

No, that’s not the right word.  He’s fed up – irritated and just _done_ with this.  Done with Neverland and its mercurial ruler out to either torment him or use him as cannon fodder in a game he does not know.

His tone is sarcastic and spiteful as he taunts the eternal boy to play a song.  Any song.  After all, what use is having an instrument if you don’t play and he’s been _aching_ to hear him play the pipes. 

The Pan isn’t easy to goad; being the one usually needling others into doing what he wishes but Baelfire has the ability to infuriate him like no other and he utilizes it to his advantage.

The Pan’s lips are on the ends of the pipes before he even realizes it.  He plays fast and harsh and the tune that sings from the chambers is angry and savage but there is a different tone lurking underneath it.

Baelfire feels his body move without his accord to the lilting melody of the pipes and the steady beat of the drums but his mind is on a different wavelength.  He feels his legs dancing to the savage rhythm and his throat choking out peels of wild laughter but his eyes are wide and his heart feels _empty_.

He can see this is not the norm because when he looks into the eyes of the Lost Boys that dance around him, their gazes are horrified.

The empty feeling spreads, fills his lungs and leeches the warmth from his limbs and suddenly, Baelfire wants to be _home._

Not London, but that small little hut he was born in.

All he can think about is his father’s reserved smiles and his mother’s mischievous grins.  He feels phantom hands smoothing out his hair and lips on his forehead exactly in the same places his father and mother used to kiss him goodnight when they tucked him into bed and then he _hears_ their voices beckoning and calling out his name.

_(Bae, my son, my boy)_

But then the music stops and Baelfire is left on his knees with the other Lost Boys who are shaking and crying and screaming for their mothers and fathers.

The Pan looks as shaky and _lost_ as the rest of them but then the moment passes and he’s outraged.

“ _You ruin everything!”_ he hisses before snatching the Baelfire by his neckerchief and throwing him to Felix to be placed in a cage.

He’s let out three days later and the first moment he can, Baelfire runs and doesn’t look back.  He never returns to the camp, instead finding refuge from the Lost Boys in a cave on the far side of the island and a few weeks later, he captures the Pan’s shadow and escapes back to the Land without Magic.

He’s too caught up in assimilating back into a world that is once again out of his time era to think of Pan and his _release_.  To think of how easy it had been for him to remain hidden on the island that was very much an extension of the demon boy.  To think of how Pan had thrown his pipes into the fire as Baelfire was being hauled away or how the flames had crackled and burned green from the pipes. 

(To think of how the pendent attached to the string of the pipes had melted into a sizzling puddle of silver or how it had looked suspiciously like a thimble.)


End file.
